What happened to President Trump’s executive order banning DEI grants?
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, issued a statement welcoming a new $3 million grant to the Alaska-based Koahnic Broadcast Corporation from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The funding is intended to expand the production and distribution capacity of Native-focused public media programming nationwide. KBC owns and operates KNBA in Anchorage, known as the first Native radio station in an urban market, and Rising Indigenous Voices Radio (RIVR), an internet radio station streaming modern Native music.
Murkowski emphasized that the investment will strengthen rural media infrastructure, support Indigenous journalists, producers, and hosts, and ensure culturally relevant storytelling remains sustainable. She highlighted that the funding will bolster two of KBC’s flagship programs: Native America Calling and National Native News.
According to publicly available data, KBC is described as “reaching audiences of more than 500,000 each week.” KBC does not publish a precise total number of unique listeners.
The US Supreme Court in cases like Morton v. Mancari (1974) and Haaland v. Brackeen (2023) has upheld that preferences or funding tied to tribal membership or indigenous communities are considered political classifications, not racial ones. Thus the broadcasting entity can be legitimately called a political entity.
However, the funding comes at a time when federal policy is shifting sharply away from the very diversity initiatives that KBC publicly embraces. Koahnic’s own
DEI statement emphasizes identity-based hiring, cultural programming priorities, and representation goals, an approach that stands in contrast to President Trump’s Executive Order 14151, signed on Jan. 20.
That order directs federal agencies to terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all equity-related grants and contracts tied to DEI and “environmental-justice programs,” remove DEI performance metrics from grant evaluations, and identify past recipients for potential review.
A companion order, EO 14173, instructs the Office of Management and Budget to eliminate DEI references from all grant processes and revokes prior DEI-promoting directives. Despite these new federal mandates, Koahnic continues to operate under a clearly articulated DEI framework and now has a new $3 million grant from Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
7 thoughts on “Murkowski applauds DEI-laced Native radio grant by Corporation for Public Broadcasting”
Dependent upon government grants = sustainable ? Huh?
“Daddy’s Little Princess” … (!!!) Every day, proving // demonstrating she’s completely – wholly incompetent and unworthy to be serving as Alaska’s US Senator. She needs to be ‘retired’ in the next election cycle, put out to pasture in AZ, completely forgotten about, so the competent adults can start cleaning up the mess.
Off topic but I wish Downing would report on the disastrous Trump administration. We see daily lies and incompetence and grift that affects us all. I understand why she doesn’t want to reveal the corruption of conservatives, but still.
Hmmm. Disastrous? How? Please be specific.
sleaze-A pandering to Natives, and SPENDING!. Must be a day ending in Y oh, and Evan spewing leftist crap.
It seems more and more her true colors are being revealed. Our state is definilty moving toward blue and I suspect Murkowski sees that and it is further emboldening her.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Beavis and Butthead are the illegitimate children of Chuck Schumer and Lisa Murkowski. Just look at them, side-by-side, and then tell me they aren’t related.